A Narratological and Didactic Analysis of Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993).
Tanja Dromnes ENG-3993
Master‟s Degree Programme in English and Education Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education
University of Tromsø Spring 2010
I remember a place Where I'd never been Across time and space and sea.
I hear Besta's voice Trembling with magic Bringing that place to me.
(Faythe Dyrud Thuren)
Table of Contents
1. Introduction p. 7
1. 1 Narratological didactics and didactical narratology p. 9
1. 2 Introductory summary p. 13
2. Narratology p. 14
2. 1 Focalization and Narration p. 16
2. 2 Embedded Narrative p. 18
2. 3 Sherman Alexie p. 21
2. 4 The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993) p. 25
2. 4. 1 Every Little Hurricane p. 25
2. 4. 2 This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona p. 31 2. 4. 3 The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire p. 37 2. 4. 4 A Train Is an Order of Occurrence p. 40
2. 4. 5 Family Portrait p. 43
2. 4. 6 Somebody Kept Saying Powwow p. 46
2. 4. 7 Witnesses, Secret and Not p. 48
2. 5 Preliminary conclusion p. 51
3. Didactics p. 53
3. 1 Preliminary conclusion p. 63
4. Conclusion - Narratological didactics and didactical narratology p. 65
Works Cited/Illustrations p. 67
Appendices:
1: Teaching scheme for teaching Sherman Alexie and ”This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.”
2: Critical analysis of literature.
3: Presentation Sherman Alexie and “This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.”
4: Organization of “This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.”
5: Study questions for “This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.”
6: Evaluation criteria for written papers – Kvaløysletta Skole.
1. Introduction
Once upon a time, in a secondary world, long, or not so long ago… This might have been an appropriate introduction to this thesis, reflecting its main concern, namely storytelling. It would, however, fail to indicate its academic nature and didactic aim. Thus, a more
narratological approach will be a better reflection of its true nature, a narratological approach which connects narratives with reality and the classroom through a coherent line called didactic. Atlantic Monthly Press claims on the cover of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven1 (1993) that Sherman Alexie is a modern mythmaker, and I strongly agree; he is a storyteller with a firm belief in the power of storytelling. They furthermore write that what is explored in The Lone Ranger is the “distance between people: between Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and, most poetically, between modern Indians and the traditional figures from their past.” This is a good description, in my opinion, of a collection that explores the nature of relationships between people and these characters‟ struggle to find an autonomous modern identity.
My claim is that by studying literature and the structures in literature, one may come to new understandings useful to our conception of the world and how we view ourselves. Hence, literature has a legitimate place in second language teaching. My aim is to simplify the
theories of narratology to make them more accessible in order to make possible a practical use of the findings in the analysis in the classroom. In addition, it will reflect my view of literature as a piece of art which reflects a reality outside the fiction and also this composite of short stories, Sherman Alexie as a writer and his didactical voice as a storyteller. It will furthermore illustrate why Alexie‟s fiction in particular should be included in the curriculum in Norwegian secondary schools. The main focus will be the complex narration and focalization and also the narrative structure of several of the short stories that appear as frame stories with several embedded narratives which serve to boost themes of personal and collective crisis,
“hurricanes,” the social situations for Native Americans, and, above all, the theme of storytelling and the didactical power of the storyteller‟s voice. The view of literature as a means through which one may understand life and develop as a human being must also be reflected in the teaching. By placing a teaching plan for these findings in the Didactic Relationships Model and the national curriculum, I will address several aspects of teaching.
1 Hereafter shortened to The Lone Ranger.
This, in turn, will ensure a well reflected teaching consistent with both the core and the
subject specific curriculums‟ aim to teach language, communication and culture and to inspire the pupils to develop as reflected human beings. My approach will mostly be the vertical structure which will reveal a more in depth, more hermeneutic, analysis to answer the question, in what ways are the events presented and how does that contribute to the meaning of the narrative? An analysis of the vertical structures alone, however, is not sufficient to account for meaning, so where appropriate, the horizontal structure will also be discussed. To understand the meaning of a narrative it is essential to allow oneself to follow the horizontal structure through an implicit vertical structure.
Before I begin my analysis of Alexie‟s The Lone Ranger, I will briefly present the leading theories on the field of narratology, mostly those of Mieke Bal. More specifically, I will explain how a hermeneutic approach will reveal how narratology can be didactic, and how information and knowledge can be presented as a narrative. I will also present the elements of narration and focalization, and those of frame stories and embedded narratives. My aim is to simplify the theories in order to make them more accessible to those readers who are not narratologists, but who for several reasons are interested in critical analysis of literature. For me and teachers alike, this approach will make possible a practical use of the findings in the analysis in the classroom in both lower and upper secondary school. My aim, however, is not to oversimplify, but keep the high academic standard provided by Bal and wrap them up in a more common demonstration.
I will also briefly present Sherman Alexie. Though not necessarily vital for the analysis of the short stories in themselves, a biographical presentation of the author may be included in a teaching scheme in the classroom and provide the background information needed to view his writing as literature which reflects a reality outside the fiction and Sherman Alexie as a writer;
a writer who explores the terrain of reservation life where anger times imagination is the ascribed method for survival, a reality in which Alexie has taken on a similar role of a storyteller and trickster employed in his fiction. Exaggeration and humor, commonplace details and vivid imagery are hallmarks of Alexie‟s style. Though often labeled “postmodern”
it, in fact, mirrors the oral Native American storytelling tradition. His use of humor and irony and exaggerated stereotypes of Native Americans is a written representation of an oral form in which the trickster figure functions as a comic trope to challenge the order of things: “Making fun of things or being satirical […] is a tool that enables me to talk about anything. It makes
dialogue possible” (Alexie: A World of Story-Smoke). Furthermore, it leads to the last part of the essay which is of a more didactic character. The view of literature as a means through which one may understand life and develop as a human being must also be reflected in the teaching. The last part of the essay will make use of the findings of the analysis in a didactic manner by presenting an example of how my study may be placed in the school curriculum in Norway. In order to do this, I will approach the task having a didactic model of relationships in mind. I will comment on how this material can be placed in the Didactic Relationships Model in order to develop a teaching plan which will take into considerations several aspects of teaching. This, in turn, will ensure a well reflected teaching, one that will make possible to develop theories based on praxis, a praxis theory. The reason for this approach is that I recognize in myself and my colleagues and fellow students an emotion depicted well by Julia Alvarez, though in another setting, which is the primary emotion the first years in the
profession for many new teachers as they idealistically enter the school ground. We “were thrown in the deep end of the public school pool and left to fend for ourselves. Not everyone came up for air” (62). As Paulo Coelho so eloquently puts it: “What drowns a person is not the dive, but the fact of staying under water” (Warrior of the Light).
1. 1 Narratological Didactics and Didactical Narratology.
The reason both for studying literature and teaching literature is because a story may only be given its sense from the world that is using it. Outside the story is the world. One may
understand a story with the conception one has of the world and one may use the story, if one is able or willing to learn how to, to understand the world. My claim is that by studying literature and the structures in literature, one may come to new understandings which are useful in our conception of the world and in that sense narratology is didactical. In the quest for a growing awareness in one‟s pupils, this understanding of narratology must be applied with words as adequate as possible at a level as appropriate as possible in order to make each pupil able to enlarge his or her own understanding of the world through the world of
literature. To achieve this goal, we need to communicate an understanding of the
narratological techniques and tools through the means of the theory and methodology of didactics.
The aspects of interest in this essay are both of narratological and pedagogical character. Even though the main part will treat the narratological aspects, my aim is to have both in mind
throughout the analysis. Therefore, the connection between the two will be implicit throughout. This is also what I find that the work in question does and it is what I believe literature in general does even though it is easy to “forget” this reality while diving into a technical narratological analysis. This essay will concentrate, therefore, mainly on the small narratological aspects which, in my opinion, are the most prominent in The Lone Ranger.
Although setting and characterization and how those interconnect with the theme are also interesting, I will merely touch upon these subjects in this essay.
The main focus, however, will be the complex narration and focalization and also the narrative structure of several of the short stories in the collection which appear as frame stories with several embedded narratives and how this contributes to a very visual presentation of the stories. This makes it relevant to distinguish between the narrative perspective and the focal point. I will focus on this by looking at themes of personal and collective crisis, “hurricanes,” the social situations for Native Americans, and, above all, the theme of storytelling and the storyteller. It is precisely through storytelling and the voice of the storyteller, that Alexie makes his stories both entertaining and didactical. In my opinion, one should strive to achieve this kind of voice in the classroom as well, the voice of the storyteller. In Alexie, the personal level of the themes can be seen as a representation of themes on a collective level. The projection from the personal levels onto a collective level is done through the subtle means of narrative techniques and the use of nature imagery. As for the movie Smoke Signals (1998) based on the works treated in this essay, it is only mentioned simply as an example of one didactic method although a narratological study of movies would be an interesting study on its own.
The overall purpose of this essay is to make an academically and theoretically based reflection which may be useful in the classroom. Therefore, the reflections are based on teaching literature in general and Native American literature specifically, but may also be applied to teaching in general and how storytelling is one of the many didactic methods which may and should be applied in the classroom. The syllabus in English in Norwegian lower secondary school is most often arranged thematically. Native American writers and/or
interviews with Native American pupils of the same age may be included in different topics or arranged as a topic on its own, dealing with only Native Americans, containing cultural and historical facts as well as Native American literature, in which case this thesis will be highly applicable. It may also be especially useful in teaching critical analysis in general. The latter
is what I have chosen to have my focus on which is reflected in the teaching scheme provided in the appendices.
The reason for this interest in storytelling is based both upon my experience as a student and as a teacher. Teachers that still stand out in my mind from my own period as a pupil in lower secondary school more than twenty-five years ago are those who mastered the skill of telling stories. Little did I reflect on the didactic aspect of these stories back then. From my
experience as a teacher, however, my reflection on my own teaching led me to strive to present a new topic in my English classes in the most interesting way as possible for the pupils. This, in turn, was caused by my observation of how the work with one topic was fruitful or not, depending enormously upon how we entered it.
Not all information can be presented in the form of a story and storytelling cannot be the only method by which to teach. The question I asked, however, is why my teaching often worked when storytelling was one of the pre-chosen methods, meaning that the pupils learned something of course, and why other sessions seemed to be fruitless when it came to the learning outcome of the pupils even when I was well prepared. Like I said, storytelling cannot be the only method of choice and the topics must be further presented and worked with, i.e.
with various fictional and documentary clips, i.e. from YouTube, which not only serve as a continued presentation of the story, but also acknowledge the fact that pupils may acquire knowledge in different manners. Some may be visual and some auditory learners, or both, to name a few learning styles. Therefore, the pupils have to work with different kinds of
assignments with the aim of making them assimilate the information in the story into new knowledge. Also, as the editors point out in Veiledning i tilpasset opplæring (2009), variation and differentiation is a vital necessity in the Norwegian school: “In the Norwegian school, the pupils are together no matter what their learning abilities are. The diversity of pupils we find within one class makes it essential to vary the approach to the curriculum and to offer the pupil many various ways to work with the subjects” 2 (6).
2 My translation of Sandal et. al.: ”I den norske grunnskolen går elevene sammen uansett læreforutsetninger.
Det mangfold av elever vi finner innenfor en skoleklasse, gjør det påkrevet å variere innfallsvinkler til lærestoffet og å tilby eleven mange ulike måter å arbeide med lærestoffet på.”
The significance of storytelling in teaching, however, is not merely a claim of mine. The very genre of short stories has its origin precisely in the oral storytelling. The Norwegian fairytales, a great part of our cultural inheritance, often had a moral lesson to teach. Even before that, the skaldic art of the Vikings, another part of our Norwegian cultural inheritance, employed the proud and acknowledged art of storytelling precisely because “the way of teaching is to tell stories” (Silko, An Interview) and when information, scientific, technological, historical, religious, is put into narrative form, it is because” it is easier to remember that way.”
Furthermore, the Vikings even had their own famous trickster, the Norse God Loki who, for the most part, was malicious. He challenged the structure and order of the Gods but was necessary in order for things to change. A prime example from the fairytales is Espen
Askeladden as the naïve hero who, because he was good, ended up with the princess and half the kingdom although his methods were not always honorable. Usually, the trickster is a figure, most often male, who appears in stories as cunning or foolish and often funny and who contributes, not always intentionally, to the well being for the community. Trickster stories often have a didactic purpose, a moral lesson to teach. He appears in many cultures‟ folktales and often in Native Indian mythologies, also as a hero. Often, he has a two-spirited nature, the ability to change form and even magical powers. Somewhere along the historical path, we seem to have lost this notion of storytelling as a didactic method and we are left with merely the entertaining aspect of it. In his writing, Alexie plays upon this part of an old oral tradition and uses it in order to convey serious issues in a humoristic way. Thereby, he both softens the blow of his social commentary and makes the pain of difficult life experiences a little more bearable.
I do acknowledge that many teachers apply storytelling as one of their teaching methods, consciously or subconsciously. One person, however, who claims have actually found
theoretical basis from another science than narratology to support the notion of storytelling as a powerful tool to teach, is Associate Professor Brian Sturm at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. He claims that telling stories is a way of organizing information and perhaps the most powerful way: “Stories and storytelling is a way of thinking about
information. Storytelling is really a way to convey emotions and build community. That‟s fundamentally what telling a story and listening to a story is all about. ” What Sturm
illustrates, is that when you put a narrative shell around information, and do it well, it allows the reader to enter a different space. J. R. R. Tolkien calls this other space “The Secondary World.” This other place, this “Secondary World,” is what authors try to create when they
write because if you don‟t have the stories “you don't have anything” (Silko, Ceremony: 1).
Sturm furthermore claims that by listening to a story, the listener enters a slightly altered state of consciousness, similar to theories of the experience of listening to music. He offers a model he calls The Storylistening Experience in which the experience of listening to a story is
explained. According to this model, the altered state of consciousness is a state in which the listener fixates the logical part of the brain, the left hemisphere, and free up the visual and spatial part of the brain, the right hemisphere. This, in turn, actually helps the reader to become immersed in the story because the brain thereby programs the listener to visualize the story.
1. 2 Introductory Summary
My claim is that by studying literature and the structures in literature, new understandings of how we view life and ourselves may emerge and therefore literature needs to be given a significantly larger space in second language teaching than what has been the tradition in Norwegian schools. I will briefly present the leading theories on the field of narratology, mostly those of Mieke Bal. I will explain how a hermeneutic approach will reveal how narratology can be didactic, and how information and knowledge can be presented as a narrative. This approach is chosen because of my desire to make possible a practical use of the findings in the analysis in the classroom. The main focus will be the complex narration and focalization and also embedded narratives. The themes of personal and collective crisis, the social situations for Native Americans, and the theme of storytelling and the didactical power of the storyteller‟s voice are brought forth by these narrative techniques. I will also present Sherman Alexie as a writer. Alexie is a writer who explores his life experience as a Native American and who has taken on a similar role of a storyteller and trickster employed in his fiction as a means to survive reservation life through exaggeration and humor, mirroring the Native American storytelling tradition. My aim is to have both a narratological and a pedagogical approach throughout the analysis and therefore, the connection between the two will always be implicit, much similar to Alexie‟s work. This thesis offers a narratological approach which connects narratives with reality through a coherent line called didactic. After a thorough analysis of seven of the short stories in The Lone Ranger, the findings will be placed in a teaching scheme to illustrate the practical purpose of the analysis.
2. Narratology
Although a different approach, the theories of Sturm based on the science of neuralgia, is not so farfetched to claim as one argument in this analysis, neither on the part of the
pedagogical aspect of it, though probably more obvious, nor the narratological aspect of it.
Not only is literature, needless to say, given meaning from the world outside literature, Bal recognizes how the science of narratology must likewise incorporate meaning from “the world outside” narratology. Even though cultural sciences have as their object the functioning of communication itself and only study the problems in the communicative system, arguments in a narratological study “can be borrowed from perception, from the empirical base, but just as well from other fields, such as the logic of technical and social implications” (On Story- Telling: 33-34). Furthermore, that it is important in analyzing the narratological techniques in a work not to forget the “discursive aspect of the cognitive process” (30) as it is, after all, a cognitive process to write and a cognitive process to read and interpret.
Bal renders Wilhelm Dilthey hermeneutic understanding of knowledge as “the projection of the self into something external, in such a way that an unfamiliar or past experience is represented in the experience of the self” (On Story-Telling: 31). Furthermore that self- understanding, “indispensable to a social communication that can meet these demands, is constituted at the intersection of the mutual intersubjective understanding of others and the intersubjective understanding of oneself. This is why self-reflection has a socially
indispensable critical function.” Alexie recognizes and acknowledges that self-reflection has this socially indispensable critical function in The Lone Ranger, both overtly and covertly.
This will be revealed through a hermeneutical approach to a narratological analysis of the collection. The characters struggle with an unfamiliar or past experience which is reflected in their perceptions of the self and that of the community. That is what constitutes their
“hurricanes” or “skeletons.” Those who are allowed to have an autonomous self seem to have a large degree of self-reflection. In addition, the collection seems to encourage self-reflection and the subjective responsibility to acquire knowledge of one‟s individual and collective past and present in order to assert both an individual and communal identity. “There is an abyss between a (lived) situation and its linguistic expression” (On Story-Telling: 32) Bal claims, and so does the narrator and focalizer, Junior, recognize in “Family Portrait” when he says that each story seemed to change “with each telling until nothing was recognizable or
aboriginal” (192). In order for the characters in the universe of the story to assert a collective
and personal autonomous identity, the use of self-reflection and self-understanding in a social communication is crucial. Otherwise, as illustrated in the diegesis, the individual is lost, exemplified for instance by Victor in “All I Wanted to Do Was Dance.” He had been
figuratively lost for forty years but “he wasn‟t going to save anyone. Maybe not even himself”
(90). This is part of what the author wants to communicate to the reader, and therefore why a hermeneutical approach to literature always must be present, implicitly or explicitly. This connection to a narratological analysis is precisely what Bal refers to in On Story-Telling:
Hermeneutical understanding is in this sense indispensable. The hermeneutic
corresponds to the distance which the human subject must both maintain and express between itself – that is, its identity and its structures in the history of (its) life – and its objectifications. Without this distance, the subject risks being reified by those to whom it addresses itself, since it would be identified with what it expresses. But without the hermeneutic, the distance would remain irreducible, intersubjectivity would be destroyed, social life impossible, the individual lost. (32)
Technical mastery alone cannot make any sense without reflection, and is therefore
purposeless on its own right. Furthermore, reflection which is not based on technical models which contribute to the structuring of a narrative makes incomplete explanations. Thus, the two must go hand in hand in critical analysis of literature as they are equally indispensable.
The connection between narratology, literature and life must not get lost in the process of analyzing because a story will only be given its sense of meaning from the world that is using it. In turn, the very purpose of critical analysis of texts is to make use of the story to
understand the world at one level or another. Posited as a critique of modern approaches such as structuralism, positioning hermeneutics all the way on the other side of the axis and totally separate from it, Paul Ricoeur once said that narrative ordering is “a fundamental human experience, a way of structuring human existence in time and of opening up for the possibility of meaningful action” (35). That is precisely what constitutes the power of storytelling.
Social expectations are part of the socialization process which takes place continually and it is precisely the trouble of identifying oneself which leads to the personal and collective identity crisis in humans, their “hurricanes.” This is because “social interaction goes on at the level of signs” (Bal, On Story-Telling: 38) and because the “possession of signs makes possible the representation of authority, and assures the possessor a place in the ideology under
formation.” Storytelling is “a way to convey emotions and build a community” (Sturm).
2. 1 Focalization and Narration
Although what leads to the action of narratives are the characters, and therefore is most commonly analyzed, other aspects of a narrative, Bal claims, must be examined before that of character, namely that of the focalizer, “who sees,” and the narrator, “who speaks.” In lower secondary school, however, I believe that identifying and interpreting characters probably must come first, or at least simultaneously. Having in mind, of course, the level of maturity of the pupils, I do believe all these aspects can be taught in lower secondary school in order to provide a growing awareness of narrative structures.
Although fiercely criticizing Gérard Genette on many points, Bal gives due credit for his recognition, at least, of the need for a theory in narratology which distinguishes between the function of “seeing” and “speaking.” Bal‟s method helps to reduce the confusion in
narratology between vision and speech. Based on focalization, the narrator can be classified in terms of his or her absence or presence in the narrative. If, in the narrator, we recognize a
“person” who is absent from or invisible in the story, Bal claims, the narrator is
“heterodiagetic.” In that case, we have an external focalizer which she refers to as EF. This narrator “says less than the character knows,” of course, as the thoughts and dreams of the character may not be revealed as long as they are presented only from the outside. On the other hand, if we recognize the narrator as someone who is present in the story he tells, the narrator is “homodiegetic.” In that case the focalization is internal and we have a character focalizer which Bal refers to as CF. The narrator may say “more than any of the characters know” or “only what a given character knows,” depending on the degree of presence. This classification clarifies a previous confusion between speaking and seeing and restricts itself to the notion of the narrator as “the one who speaks,” which previous theories have failed to encompass. Bal and other critics elaborate further this notion of a homodiegetic and
heterodiagetic narrator. This distinction is, however, sufficient for my analysis. The narrator is
“the one who tells,” who is doing the narrating. The focalizer is “the one who sees,” who gives the perspective from which the story is seen. In Alexie‟s fiction in particular, it is relevant to make a distinction between the narrator and the focalizer because his fiction integrates elements from both Western forms and tribal storytelling to create a modern Native storytelling voice. This creates very visual as well as oral images in which both the
perspectives from which the action is viewed and narrated are important.
The new aspect of Bal‟s theory is that it assigns “an autonomous role to the focalizer” (Garcia Landa: 115) as the point from which the elements are viewed. In some narratives, the
focalization technique is fairly simple and the focalizer remains constant throughout. Other narratives, on the other hand, have a complex focalization technique. It is sometimes
necessary to sort out, if possible, whether there is ambiguity with reference to the focalization.
For example, the “voice” may vary within a narrative, creating a mixed focalization with a variation in the focal point, and sometimes a double or ambiguous focalization. The “voice”
may be the one of the external focalizer or a character or a whole community. It may vary and overlap. By sorting out the reference to the focalization, we may credit the author, who
delegates his or her voice to the narrator who, in turn, delegates his or her voice to the
focalizer. After all, it is the focalizer‟s view the reader is presented and “the image we receive of the object is determined by the focalizor”3 (Bal, Narratotogy: 153). The focalizer can be outside or inside the story. If the focalizer coincides with a character, the reader is inclined to accept this vision as the “truth.” In other words, the choice the author makes through the focalizer, in the way he or she presents the story, influences the way the reader perceives the story.
For example, the focalizer in the first story, “Every Little Hurricane,” seems to be an external focalizer who sometimes leaves the focalization to the main character, Victor. It is evident, however, that the point of view presented is not always that of a child‟s even though Victor tells his story from the point of view of himself as a child. It is not clear, however, when the focalizer is the EF and when it is CFVictor. This kind of focalization is what Mieke Bal refers to as ambiguous focalization EF/CFVictor. The external focalizer sometimes watches along with the character in a double focalization, EF + CFVictor or an ambiguous focalization where it is not clear whether the focalizer is the external focalizer or the character focalizer, EF/CF.
Following Bal‟s terminology, I will distinguish between external (extradiegetic) and internal (intradiegetic) focalization, by employing “EF” to refer to the narrator as focalizer and “CF”
to designate when a character in the story is focalizer. Focalization technique is part of the signs which form the network, “a web,” of significations, one “thread in the cloak of the story” contributing on a subconscious level in the reader to the interpretation of the story.
3 ‘Focalizor’ is the spelling employed by Mieke Bal. I prefer to use the more standard spelling ‘focalizer’
throughout my thesis.
2. 2 Embedded Narratives
In some narratives, of course, the plot is arranged as a neat recount of events from one point in time in the story, to the next. It is important, however, to distinguish narrative levels and diegetic levels and their mutual relationships. In The Lone Ranger, the plot in most of the stories is arranged as a frame story while another story is told at the second or third level, either as flashbacks in the form of memories or as dreams or visions. Alexie often employs oral narrative techniques as reoccurring characters, alternating narrators, flashbacks, historical references and time shifts. Unlike the classically conventional linear form, The Lone Ranger is episodic in structure. Bal uses Arabian Nights as a good and much used example of frame stories and embedded narratives. A frame story, a “primary narrative,” presents the story of Scheherazade who, in a “secondary narrative,” every night tells a story and in that story new stories are embedded. Sometimes “the apparently loose relationship between primary and embedded text is relevant to the development of the primary fabula” (Narratology: 57) as is the case in Arabian Nights. The act which produces the embedded text is the important event in the story of the primary text. The relationship between the primary narrative and the secondary narrative lies in the symbolic act of the narration. To the king and to Scheherazade narrating means life, although in two different senses. Another example, very similar to what will be revealed in this analysis, also offered by Bal, is Toni Morrison‟s Beloved:
In Morrison‟s Beloved, […] narration gives life – is also dramatized. [The] primary narrator says that “the two did the best they could do to create what really happened”, and indeed, Beloved‟s existence as a subject must be „created‟ by story-telling. This storytelling must be performed by the primary narrator because, precisely, Beloved herself lacks the subjectivity that is required for the act of narration. (Narratology: 58)
Bal distinguishes several kinds of relationships between a primary (the frame story) and a secondary (embedded) narrative. For the sake of my analysis of The Lone Ranger, I will recount two. The function of the embedded narrative may be merely explanatory or it may be explanatory and determinative. In the first case the embedded narrative explains what happens in the frame story, the primary narrative, either explicitly or implicitly leaving the explanation up to the interpretation of the reader. Sometimes even the embedded narrative is the one that is important as the frame story depicts a situation in which change cannot appear is the case in many of the stories in The Lone Ranger. In the case of the latter, where the function of the embedded narrative may be both explanatory and determinative, the “explanation of the
starting situation may also lead to change” (Narratology: 59). This influences what goes on in the frame story making the structure of the narrative even more than just a story-telling device. It serves to boost the themes on a new level and storytelling becomes the act of creation, creating a self. This is precisely what emerges as the overall theme in The Lone Ranger. Once again, I will borrow Bal‟s example from Beloved where she claims it is particularly important “for the narrative to be fully appreciated […] as the narrators‟ joint efforts slowly narrate Beloved into life. Narration is an act of creation” and that “in this sense the narrative aligns the power of narration with the divine creation [and the] whole point of the narrative is, precisely, the creative power of story-telling itself, as a life-giving act”
(Narratology: 59). This image of storytelling as a life-giving act is even more explicitly depicted by another Native American author, Leslie Marmon Silko: “Thought-Woman, the spider,/named things and/as she named them/they appeared./She is sitting in her
room/Thinking of a story now/I‟m telling you the story/She is thinking” (Ceremony: 1).
Storytelling is surviving as it is the means by which one can connect the past, the present, and the future. In her first novel, Ceremony (1977), Silko weaves myth, history and personal and collective recollection in a similar way as Alexie and explains how vital storytelling is to the Laguna Pueblo culture, and the Native American culture, and how Euro American culture has made many attempts to destroy the stories and thereby the culture of the Native Americans.
The opening of Ceremony emphasizes the importance of storytelling and exemplify precisely the repeated attempts of white groups do annihilate its power and thereby destroy the Native American autonomy:
I will tell you something about stories, [he said]
They aren‟t just for entertainment.
Don‟t be fooled
They are all we have, you see,
All we have to fight off illness and death.
You don‟t have anything If you don‟t have the stories.
Their evil is mighty
but it can‟t stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories let the stories be confused or forgotten They would like that.
They would be happy.
Because we would be defenseless then. (Ceremony: 1)
It is not until the end of The Lone Ranger, however, the reader truly realizes how thoroughly the structure of the stories has duped us, revealing actually how closely the thematic and the formal structures are related by revealing how the whole point of the narrative is the creative and didactic power of storytelling itself. The signs that form part of the rules of the narrative produce in turn other signs which form a network of significations that manifests itself as the total meaning of the narrative.
2. 3 Sherman Alexie
This chapter will introduce Sherman Alexie‟s writing and his biographical background through a post-colonial theoretic approach that is relevant to the ways he weaves his life experience as a Native person into his fiction. The chapter will also touch upon the cultural, historical and social situation for Native Americans as these are mainly themes that Alexie‟s fiction revolves around as well as universal existential questions.
The Spokane/Coeur d‟Alene Indian Sherman Alexie has made an impact, not only on contemporary Native American literature, but also for Native Americans and the process of accepting and dealing with their cultural and historical heritage along with other Native American writers as for example Leslie Marmon Silko. Different literary approaches may be applied to Alexie‟s fiction. His writing must be interpreted as post-modern with his practice of weaving historical and popular culture characters into his fiction. It is furthermore relevant to see his works in the light of post-colonialism. This, in turn, only adds to the emotional
complexity in his works and his work as historian. Notions of race and identity have an interdependent relationship. Although post-colonialism will differ depending on different experiences, a common factor is the portrayal of feelings of marginalization and
estrangement. This may, as in much of Alexie‟s work, emerge as new notions of identification. Åse Nygren writes about how Alexie narrates suffering as a witness to a collective trauma and how, in the attempt to assert a collective notion of identification:
“American Indian storytellers have created a body of literature which speaks potently about suffering and the negotiations, both cultural and personal, necessary for survival as American Indians in the United States” (458). An “on-going colonialism” is what Alexie calls the Euro American westernizing of Native Americans and it still asserts a painful presence essential in his fiction.
This pain, however, is presented in a humorous and ironic way which is typical for Alexie.
Furthermore, this comic mode is also present in the Native American identity as a way to cope and survive after the repeated attempts to destroy their culture. His writing is simultaneously tragicomic and comic. Alexie recognizes that the stereotype view of Native Americans in the mainstream American culture has resulted in a collective identity crisis for many Native Americans because: “You can never be as strong as a stereotypical warrior, as godly as a stereotypical shaman, or as drunk as a drunken Indian” (Alexie: A World of Story-Smoke).
That the comic mode “seeks reconciliation and a return to equilibrium using whatever resources at hand” (Castor: 124) is precisely the purpose of Alexie‟s comic and ironic
storytelling voice. Alexie integrates elements from both Western forms and tribal storytelling to create a modern Native storytelling voice and hence makes a written representation of an oral storytelling tradition. The incorporating of the indigenous trickster stories is part of the indigenous oral literature and part of Alexie‟s way to assert an identity rooted both in the traditional Native American and the Euro American past. The trickster figure embodies contradiction and ambiguity and its literary and social function is “to expose the false fronts of the rigid social institutions and call into question the necessity and validity of these and other social constructions” (Blaeser: 152-153) and it often does so through a comic and ironic mode. All humorous work by an indigenous author is not a result of a trickster influence, of course. Nevertheless, in The Lone Ranger even storytelling in itself may appear as such a figure to serve as a foil to the post-colonial commodity culture through the many versions of Thomas Builds-the Fire. The purpose of the trickster is to represent a force for balance and survival. Its manifestation in the story is contradictory, ambiguous and exaggerated. Usually it is a solitary figure, but may sometimes appear as dual as in “This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.” It is always, however, a contributor to the overall well being of the tribe.
In The Lone Ranger the tricksters function as mediators. They draw attention and respond to various interpretations of the collective hurricanes caused by colonialism and to the cost to one‟s pride and sense of self by living on the margins of a white society for generations.
One might wonder, how is this approach connected to narratology since narratology is more a technique of analysis of the structures within a work? The answer is that a story may only be given its meaning from the world that is using it, as does narratology. It is through the post- colonial eyes one may see how Alexie uses his language to free himself as a Native American, both personally and collectively, from the values imposed upon Native Americans by the colonizing Europeans and, most importantly, the conflicting values imposed by themselves.
This will become clear through a narratological approach to the interpretation of his works. A good example may be found in how the narrator depicts time, stories and storytelling in
“Family Portrait:” “I don‟t know where all the years went. I remember only the television in detail. All the other moments worth remembering became stories that changed with each telling, until nothing was aboriginal or recognizable” (192) and: “Often the stories contained people who never existed before our collective imaginations created them” (193).
Alexie has achieved numerous awards for his poetry and his fiction. He also actively works for institutes and programs that help other Native-American writers as adviser or teacher or mentor. Born with hydrocephalus, he not only survived against the odds, he clearly showed an incredible sense for reading and writing at an extremely early age. As a child, he was looked upon as a “freak,” he says in an interview at KCTS9 who was “bullied quite a bit.” “I was labeled an apple early on, red on the outside and white on the inside,” he says. Early on he saw the limitations of the reservation to his development and education and sought out of the reservation to attend high school even though that meant being the only Native American in his school. He published his first works of poetry shortly after graduating from Washington State University in 1987: The Business of Fancydancing (1991) and I Would Steal Horses (1992). As many of his characters, and many Native Americans, Alexie had a drinking problem. In contrast to many of his characters, though, he managed to overcome these problems early on.
The matter of Native Americans drinking problems might be treated as a theme of its own as it is clear in many of his stories that this is not only a theme on a personal level but one that may be projected on to a collective level. Two good examples illustrate the point well. In “All I wanted to do was dance,” the main character, Victor, drinks. He drinks because he wants “to ease that tug in his throat and gut” (88) and because he “thought one more beer could save the world” (88). Growing up on the Spokane Reservation, his father Coeur d‟Alene and his mother Spokane, he lived a very typical reservation life. His mother sobered up when he was seven and had several random jobs, but the family was poor and lived in government houses.
In reflecting on his many health problems early in life, he acknowledges that his many problems may have made him stronger and gave him a very strong will to survive. His sister died in a house fire where alcohol played a large role. In the movie Smoke Signals, Thomas Builds-the-Fire is saved in a house fire in which his parents died and born like a storyteller.
Alexie sees his sister‟s death as a symbol of himself being born as a storyteller.
In his 2007 novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian he specifically writes for a young audience. The story is told from the perspective of the Native American teenager Arnold Spirit Jr., better known as Junior. The story is about his life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and how he leaves the reservation to go to an all-white high school off the reservation in the town called Reardon. The story is autobiographical and deals with issues such as racism and poverty and how to find a way to incorporate the Native American
tradition into an identity which is also American. Alexie is very humble in his writing for a young audience and realizes not only that young adult readers outnumber adult readers, but also that the impact he may have on them is much larger. He is very conscious of the greater responsibility as an author he therefore has to them. He recognizes teenagers as extremely passionate and devoted readers, and often receives e-mails from teenagers who recognize themselves and find strength in his work. Alexie says in the interview with KCTSP that he writes about being an outsider and that he believes that is what young people recognize in his writing: “Almost every 16 year old feels like a freak.” This is the reason why Sherman Alexie is particularly suited to be taught in secondary school. The themes in themselves concern identity and how to find ways to assert one‟s identity. Although the motifs may be taken from a setting not familiar to Norwegian pupils, the themes are familiar and conveyed in a way that the pupils will recognize and learn from. It is important to encourage the pupils‟
understanding of the text both as an independent work of art and as something that reflects life.
2. 4 The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)
2. 4. 1 “Every Little Hurricane”
Jerome DeNuccio claims that the first story “displays the provenance of those elements that problemize Indian subjectivity” (86−96) using an image of “skeletons” trapped in the present offered by Thomas Builds-the-Fire, one of the protagonists and narrators in a great part of the stories in the collection, as an image that resonates throughout the collection. This is a good image, in my opinion, reflecting how the characters in all of the stories struggle with different
“trapped skeletons” both from the past and the present. Another reoccurring image is that of the “hurricane.” In the very first sentence, the image occurs. It soon becomes clear that this nature image of a hurricane is not only reflecting a natural phenomenon, but is also used as a metaphor to depict the personal crisis that torment both the main characters on a personal level and that this theme of “personal hurricanes” is projected onto a collective level, reflecting the situation of Native Americans in general. Through the reading of the twenty- two short stories it becomes evident that this hurricane is not only an image of a natural phenomenon but even more an image of an emotional condition for many of the characters in many of the stories. It may be read as a metaphor for a personal conflict, but also for a
collective conflict. The image of a skeleton trapped in the present offered by DeNuccuio is therefore a very adequate image. And, as DeNuccio further notices, Thomas realizes that in order to overcome the personal and collective conflict it is essential to recognize how “these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices” (86−96) of one‟s self and one‟s
personal and cultural identity. Consequently, one must strive to “keep moving, keep walking, in step with your skeletons” (86−96).
The story takes place New Years Eve 1976 and the protagonist, Victor, is in his bedroom listening to the party his parents are hosting. As the narrator depicts Victor‟s thoughts and experiences, it is from Victor‟s point of view. At the same time, it often shows a mature understanding of life. Two of the participants in the party, Adolph and Arnold, were fighting again: “…his uncles slugging each other with such force that they had to be in love” (2). This mixed focalization, where the EF often gives the voice away to the characters and sometimes watches along with CFVictor , continues throughout and it is often ambiguous whether it is Victor or the narrator or both who is the focalizer: “Victor could almost smell the sweat and whiskey and blood” (3) and: “But there was another pain. Victor knew that” (4). This
narrative technique contributes to the building of the theme and illustrates how the techniques and the themes are interrelated. This is furthermore expanded when the notion of the imagery of the hurricane as a natural phenomenon and the notion of the hurricane as a personal crisis are blended: “Victor wanted to know if memories of his personal hurricanes would be better if he could change them” (4).
The larger geographical and cultural setting is the Spokane Indian Reservation. An analysis of the themes and the narrative strategies of the story reveals several interesting facts. The plot is arranged as a frame story with a series of flashbacks. The narrator is external but the question of the focalizer seems to be less clear cut. The overall impression is that the narration is left to an external narrator who often leaves the focalization to the main character Victor: “It was January and Victor was nine years old” (1) but when Victor saw his uncles were fighting so fiercely they had to be in love, he reflects how strangers: “would never want to hurt each other that badly” (2). Using Bal‟s terminology, this kind of focalization is what we refer to as EF or CFVictor. But clearly, the point of view is not that of a nine year old boy. In addition, Victor is often described from the outside, from an external focalizer‟s point of view. It is not clear, however, when the focalizer is the EF and when it is CFVictor adult or CFVictor child. The alternating and ambiguous focalizers reflect a quality of an oral storytelling tradition along with the time shifts and flashbacks. It creates a visual image in which the reader can easily immerse him- or herself. The external focalizer does not entirely give away the point of view to the character but rather it watches along with the character in a double focalization, EF + CFVictor where it is not clear whether the focalizer is the external focalizer or the character Victor, EF/CFVictor. A further complication in analyzing the focal point of this story is the projection of the themes from a personal level onto a collective level. This shows the
interconnectedness of the narrative techniques and the themes. The projection of the personal themes onto a collective level also implies a collective focalizer, CFCommunity: “One Indian killing another did not create a special kind of storm. This little kind of hurricane was generic.
It didn‟t even deserve a name” (3).
The implication of a communal level is also implied through the use of the nature imagery of weather phenomena. The most prominent theme of this story, which resonates throughout the collection, explicitly or implicitly, is the personal and collective experience of intensifying anger and painful memories which create a personal crisis within the characters, a personal hurricane. The use of this natural imagery to depict this theme is a narrative technique used to
build the tension and create the powerful image of a crisis. At certain points, the
interpretations of the imagery blend and it is not always clear whether the focalizer depicts a hurricane in the sense of a natural phenomenon, or in the sense of an emotional experience.
This creates a dual understanding of the imagery. Also, as the projection of the theme from a personal and collective level is subtle, the text becomes doubly complex. This time, it is done not only through the ambiguous focalization, but also through the use of nature imagery and the creation of a dual interpretation. The introduction to the story implies a hurricane forecast:
“ a hurricane dropped from the sky in 1976 and fell so hard on the Spokane Indian
Reservation that it knocked Victor from bed and his latest nightmare” (1). This ambiguity continues throughout: “During other hurricanes broadcast on the news, Victor had seen crazy people tie themselves to trees on the beach” (3) because they wanted to “feel the force of the hurricane firsthand” (3). This was a generic “little kind of hurricane” (3), however, where “it did not create a special kind of storm” (3) if one Native American killed another.
The first flashback depicts another personal hurricane, one of Victor‟s father‟s and the theme is expanded from the personal level of Victor onto the level of his parents. Here the focalizer seems to be Victor at the age of nine recalling a Christmas at the age of five when his father cried because they had no money for presents. But once again, the focalization is mixed between the EF and CFVictor as his remarks about his mother‟s view on the situation show.
When she implies that the most important thing is that they have each other, the narrator comments that “she knew it was just dry recitation of the old Christmas movies they watched on television. It wasn‟t real” (5). In addition to contributing to the blending of the perspective from which the story is viewed, another important theme in this story and in the collection is introduced: the theme of relationships. For the narrator and the focalizer, relationships seem to be unreal, too difficult to be possible.
The second flashback appears within the first, expanding the theme of the personal hurricane in the form of his father‟s despair of having no money. One week before Christmas, Victor‟s father checks his empty wallet again and again but “it was always empty” (5). Through the use of iterative technique, Alexie expands the theme even further as in the depiction in the third flashback of how his mother dealt with similar situations: “During all these kinds of tiny storms, Victor‟s mother would rise with her medicine and magic […] and make fry bread” (5) out of air from the empty cupboards. The use of storm instead of hurricane is a way of
labeling the degree of the personal crisis by transferring the use of the semantic difference in
degree from the literal meaning of the nature images. The use of “storm” seems metaphorical but it is not always clear when the word hurricane is being used in a metaphorical or in a literal sense. The projection onto a collective level from a personal one is build upon from the earlier scene of the generic kinds of hurricanes. This states the collective nature of the theme.
The subtle transition into the fourth flashback brings the reader into Victor‟s dream. These dreams pinpoint exactly the use of nature imagery to describe a personal condition and also the blending together of the literal and the figurative meaning of the imagery. In Victor‟s dream, Victor and his parents were “waiting out a storm. Rain and lightning. Unemployment and poverty. Commodity food. Flash floods” (5). The mixed nature of the meaning of the images is also reflected in the focalization and offers another example of the
interconnectedness of the narrative strategies and the themes. The CFVictor is seemingly the focalizer as he clearly is the only one who may be in his own dreams. But the complexity of the emotions conveyed is not one a nine or a five year old boy may put into such words.
Therefore it is clear, in my opinion, that this is another example of ambiguous focalization, EF/CFVictor adult/CFVictor child.
This doubleness is reflected throughout through the use of narrative techniques and the blending of signification of images. In the dream, his mother‟s kitchen was always warm; the song was good; everything was good. The next passage offers examples of all of this as the focalizer mixes reality with dreams. He says that sometimes this dream became a nightmare when in fact describing the reality in which he lives as the nightmare with a leak house and a stomach aching with hunger: “In those nightmares, Victor felt his stomach ache with hunger.
In fact, he felt his whole interior sway, nearly buckle, then fall. Gravity. Nothing for dinner except sleep. Gale and unsteady barometer” (6). Once again, the focalization is mixed and ambiguous. The perspective is seemingly CFVictor but the presentation of his view from and adult and mature perspective indicate otherwise. Additionally, the reader‟s interpretation of the barometer, as something by which we measure emotional conditions, relies on the previous establishment of the dual signification of the nature images. The narrator continues to depict a mix of reality and dream, as he refers to another aspect of his reality as another nightmare. This time it is his father‟s alcoholism, a subject which Alexie returns to many times throughout the stories in the collection. Victor describes how his father would drink on an empty stomach. He uses nature imagery: “…it was like tearing an old tree into halves” (6) or “a reservation tsunami” (6) and also manmade “hurricanes” like “Hiroshima or Nagasaki”
also using images of war to depict a personal hurricane. In this passage, the notion of the dual
nature of the language is even more evident as aspects of the language itself are used as images to describe his father‟s condition. When he was drinking he “wasn‟t shaped like a question mark. He looked more like an exclamation point” (6). Once again, the dualism in the figurative and the literal meaning is played upon and the latter lends signification to the former.
Alexie continues to play upon this in the continuous passage as the focalizer describes his feeling of hate towards the rain by mixing the literal and figurative meaning. Victor hated rain. To him they were just low clouds “and lies” (6) and sudden rain was “like promises, like treaties” (7) alluding also to the long tradition of the white man‟s broken promises and treaties to the Native Americans and thereby projecting Victor‟s personal experiences onto a
collective Native American level. In between the second and the third and the forth flashback, the story returns to the first flashback. Finalizing the first flashback is the summing up of all the themes of alcoholism and the personal hurricanes and the social conditions for Native Americans which are introduced both through the frame story and the flashbacks in the mind of the focalizer: “And of course, Victor dreamed of whiskey, vodka, tequila, those fluids swallowing him just as easily as he swallowed them” (7). He also remembered how a
drunken, old Native American man drowned in a mud puddle and “at five, Victor understood what that meant, how it defined nearly everything. Fronts. Highs and lows. Thermals and undercurrents. Tragedy” (7). This passage illustrates another example of how the narrator continues to play upon both the ambiguous focalization technique and the ambiguous meaning of the imagery. Along with the episodic structure of the story, it reflects an oral narrative.
In returning to the frame story, another theme is introduced, that of memory, both personal and collective memory. Again, the first notion of memory is Victor‟s: “Victor might have filmed it, but his memory was much more dependable” (7). And once again, the notion is expanded from a personal to a collective notion playing upon the ambiguous use of nature imagery: “But the storm that had caused their momentary anger had not died. Instead, it moved from Indian to Indian at the party, giving each a specific, painful memory” (8).
Victor‟s memory of alcoholism may therefore easily be projected onto a memory on a collective level. The images of the tragedy of alcoholism presented through Victor‟s perspective, once again through the double and ambiguous focalization, EF + CFVictor and EF/CFVictor, are numerous. He depicts how his uncle smells: “Alcohol and sweat. Cigarettes
and failure” (9) and how he laid down between his parents who were “nearly chocking alcoholic snores” (9) and how he thought “the alcohol seeping through their skin might get him drunk” (9). The ambiguous nature of the focalization becomes even more evident when the focalizer depicts Victor‟s parent‟s memories: “Victor‟s father remembered the time his own father was spit on as they waited for a bus in Spokane” (8) and “Victor‟s mother remembered how the Indian Health Service doctor sterilized her moments after Victor was born” (8). Even though the apparent focalizer is CFVictor, a closer look will reveal that this is another example of mixed focalization where the external focalizer now watches along with the character, EF + CFVictor‟s father in the former and EF + CF Victor‟s mother in the latter. This passage also expands the theme from concerning only alcoholism and difficult relationships and the lack of money to a more general theme of the though social circumstances for Native Americans in general. This, in turn, is another example of a technique to expand from a personal to a collective level thematically as well as semantically and ads to the ambiguous and complex nature of the story.
As the story comes close to the end, religion is brought in to the theme as well as part of the identity crisis on the personal and collective level: “He said his prayers just in case his parents had been wrong about God all those years” (10). Once again, the significations of the images blend: “He listened for hours to every little hurricane spun from the larger hurricane that battered the reservation” (10). The reader knows that there is a meteorological hurricane occurring in the nature from weather forecast in the beginning of the story. Yet, the
signification becomes dual as the reader‟s interpretation builds upon the established notion of the images as metaphors to describe an emotional condition. This is further underlined as the narrator goes on to describe the crisis on a personal level for several of the characters. The story ends with the image of the painful collective memory depicted by the image of Victor describing his parents‟ empty stomachs: “There was enough hunger in both, enough
movements, enough geography and history, enough of everything to destroy the reservation and leave only random debris and broken furniture” (10-11). The final description of the passing of this hurricane in 1976 is another example of the signification of the nature imagery blending into the personal signification; they become one. The hurricane, as a natural
phenomenon, was over for now. So was the personal crisis for these characters, for now, and they “gathered to count their losses” (11), not only on a material basis, but also on a personal level, emphasizing the theme of loss as a part of the overall theme of the circumstances for the Native Americans.
The time span in the plot is one night, New Years Eve 1976. Through a series of flashbacks into memories and dreams and the narrative technique of iterative, a time span of
approximately four years is included in the story, between Christmas Eve when Victor was five to New Years Eve when he was nine. Even though the narration is external, the focalizer is not as clear. At the time of the story, Victor is between five and nine years old. Clearly, this way of describing the events and emotions connected to them is an adult and mature way.
This adult is not always identified as Victor, neither as a child nor as an adult, or as one of the other adult characters, but still the emotion conveyed indicates that the focalizer is an adult character. This indicates the existence of a communal character focalizer, CFCommunal. The suffering is not only personal; it is shared and put into words in a written form that mirrors the oral tradition to permit unpleasant topics to be dealt with. Trickster stories are hence
metaphors for a way to survive through humor. Typical of trickster narratives, Alexie employs exaggeration as a means to illustrate Victor‟s emotional stress: “Victor was back in his bed, lying flat and still, watching the ceiling lower with each step above. The ceiling lowered with the weight of each Indian‟s pain, until it was just inches from Victor‟s nose. He wanted to scream, wanted to pretend it was just a nightmare or a game invented by his parents to help him sleep” (8). Such a hyperbolic image grounded in reality characterizes the traditional oral stories Alexie uses to make suffering more bearable and make it a source of life and identity.
2.4.2 “This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”4
The generic “little kind of hurricane” (3) described in the first story “Every Little Hurricane”
is also the subject in the seventh short story of the collection, “This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.” Once again, the theme is introduced in the very first paragraph: “Victor hadn‟t seen his father in a few years, only talked to him on the telephone once or twice, but there still was a genetic pain, which was soon to be pain as real and immediate as a broken bone” (59). This is a story about pain on a personal level which is also projected onto a communal level in a similar way as in the first story. The plot in this story is also similarly organized in a series of flashbacks throughout the frame story. Moreover, the embedded
4 An example of how to make practical use of the findings in the analysis of “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” in the classroom in the Norwegian secondary school is provided in the appendices where I offer a full teaching scheme for this short story, including background information on Sherman Alexie and references to the Norwegian national curriculum.
stories seem to be equally as important as the frame story even though they seem to be merely explanatory within the context of this story. The main plot is the trip to Phoenix, Arizona to reclaim the cremated remains of Victor‟s father and metaphorically the estranged father. It is the goal of the journey that drives the plot, but through the embedded stories are the
stereotyped depictions of Victor, the stoic warrior, and Thomas, the storytelling shaman, posited to serve as critique of contemporary stereotype assumptions about American Indians.
After nearly two pages, the storyteller is introduced for the first time in this story in the form of the character Thomas Builds-the-Fire. The image of stories and the storyteller will turn out to be an important image in the composite. The initial description of the storyteller is
negative: “Thomas was a storyteller that nobody wanted to listen to. That‟s like being a dentist in a town where everybody has false teeth” (61). This implies that stories and
storytelling is not an accepted thing for Native Americans, which in turn can be connected to the theme of tradition and the rejection or accepting of these.
The first flashback is triggered by Victor‟s memory of his relationship with Thomas as the one who “always had something to say” (61). Once, when Thomas and Victor were seven and Victor‟s father still lived with the family, Thomas, at the age of seven, anticipated how
Victor‟s father would abandon his family even before he had expressed this urge to himself.
In the present, Thomas knows Victor‟s father is dead, but the reader is not given a clear answer to whether this is due to a seventh sense implied in the first flashback or not. It does, however, further contribute to the characterization of him as the strange, funny storyteller: “I heard it on the wind. I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. Also, your mother was just in here crying” (61). Victor points out that he is embarrassed to be seen talking to Thomas. The fact that they are not friends serves to increase the tension in relationships between the characters as a theme.
In this story, I believe Thomas appears as a trickster. The trickster figure appears in the oral literature of many tribes and “physical details clearly create a setting of border existence within which mediation takes place” (Blaeser: 159-160) and here Thomas, the storyteller, with his long braids, big glasses and funny stories, is an example of mediation between the oral and the written traditions. He also functions as trickster in order to present a commentary on both literary and social form without doing so directly but through humor and irony.
Blaeser says about Vizenor‟s view of Native American culture that it is about “survival through wit and humor. It identifies humor as a tool of mediation and a means to achieve
